The Top Scam in Artificial Intelligence

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Hello everyone and welcome to my newsletter where I discuss real-world skills needed for the top data jobs. 👏

This week I’m sharing several scams that are discouraging people from entering the world of data. Many of these are targeted at Ai related job opportunities.

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Hello everyone. 👏

• Defintion: Scammer 📚

• Certificates: Scam 💢

• Placement: Not one 🤣

• Jobs: None 🤣

• Top Scammer: Coursera 👑

• Scam Success: Psyops 🧠

This space is challenging enough, however; to make it even more difficult, there are tons of scammers vying for your hard earned dollars.

What is a scam? A fraudulent or deceptive act of operation. 👍

What’s my criteria for calling out something as a scam? It’s simple. You are led to believe that a certain outcome will happen if you do what the scammer is telling you or is indirectly implying will happen.

Here is the best example. Certificates of completion. You take a course, at the end of the course you receive an acknowledgment, often in the form of some placard that lets everyone know you’ve sat through the entire thing. 😂

Check that beauty out below? You put that on your resume for any tech job and I promise you’ll never hear back from a single recruiter. 😯

Thousands of people are being led to believe that a certificate of completion from platform [insert scammer platform here] will secure them or job. Here’s the truth. 

Let’s take a look at one of the top scammers in this space. One of the absolute best scammers is Coursera.

Here are some questions from Quora. These are just a few. There are several pages of similar questions. Coursera and Google never said you’d get a job, but any sane person knows that’s what is being implied. 

Here’s how the scammers get you. Look at those credentials below plastered on their home page. Colleges like Duke and Vandy and companies like Google. 👍

There it is, you even get valuable credentials when you finish like a certificate of completion, 😂 much like the college degree you have that hasn’t helped you get a job so far… and won’t.

Here’s what makes Coursera such a great scam.

• Collegiate Social Proof - The top colleges in the world are on board with this scam.

• Top Company Social Proof - The top companies in the world are a part of it and still are. Google for example.

• Personalities - Andrew Ng. One of the world’s top Ai researchers.

I love Andrew Ng. His courses are mesmerizing. He has a teaching gift. Additionally, I’ve learned a ton from him so authoring material criticizing him isn’t easy.

With that said, he’s responsible for putting millions of those from academia in real-world roles that they aren’t qualified for and for perpetuating the certificate scam.

This scam is easily the worst in all of the Ai space and Coursera is the worst offender. Two final thoughts.

• There has never been a confirmed hire from any scam site in the Ai space.

• You have no chance of getting a job after completing any of these scam sites.

Similar to the certificate scam is the job placement scam. I’m sure you’ve seen them. Here’s a good one. I’ve said it before… there has NEVER been a single placement in any top Ai role from any of the scammer platforms after completing them at any real company. 🤔

How do they get away with it? 😠 Isn’t it false advertising? Nope. Here’s what they do. After you finish the scam camp, they hire you to teach a course at another bootcamp. That counts as a job offer. It’s a great idea for these fraudsters. 👏

Here’s another interesting aspect. When people talk about the fraud, it’s often dismissed. Here’s an example. The post has 25K views and only 34 upvotes. How can that be? His assessment is accurate and honest in every way. Simple, if it’s true, the dream you had of being offered a 250K job after taking them is gone. If he’s wrong, then your dream is alive.

Some companies, like Google are continuing to push their certificate scams. I see ads all the time on my channel and others for the scam certificate below. On the picture below, check out the number of people already enrolled.

People continue to fall for certificate scams because these scams are psychologically and socially engineered to exploit common desires and vulnerabilities. Here are several key reasons:

 1. Desire for Credentials and Status

Many people want to boost their resumes, improve job prospects, or gain recognition. Scammers offer "certificates" that promise quick prestige with little effort.

 2. Lack of Awareness

Not everyone knows how to verify the legitimacy of a certifying body. Scam sites often look polished and professional, mimicking real educational institutions or training organizations. Recall the Coursera home page? It’s fantastic.

 3. Low-Cost, High-Reward Appeal

Scammers often charge low fees that seem like a bargain compared to legitimate courses. The cost is low enough that victims may not question it deeply or feel it's worth disputing even if they suspect something later.

 4. Urgency and Limited-Time Offers

Fake programs often use time pressure ("Only available for the next 24 hours!") to short-circuit critical thinking. Have you seen, you only have 3 days before the next bullshit session starts?

 5. Trust in Online Authority

People tend to trust things they find through search engines or see promoted on social media. Scammers exploit this trust with paid ads, fake testimonials, and partnerships with dubious influencers. In the case of Coursera, top Ai researchers.

 6. Scams Targeting Specific Groups

Some scams are aimed at people from developing countries or communities where access to formal education is limited. These individuals may be especially vulnerable to offers that promise international recognition or migration benefits. Additionally, some scams are target at recent college grads who aren’t familiar with how the real-world operates.

 7. Lack of Repercussions

Victims rarely report certificate scams, and enforcement is often minimal. This lets scammers continue operating with little fear of legal action.

The truth is never as sexy as the sales pitch. Data roles are top jobs within information technology. If you aren’t an autodidact and expect to be force fed everything, you aren’t going to make it in any IT role. The norm is constant learning and then applying what you’ve learned to real-world scenarios.

You can do it. Just set some realistic expectations. Have a plan that’s actually actionable. Ensure the timelines are also realistic. For example, there is nothing you can do to attain a job in machine learning or data engineering from scratch in a year or two. That’s not a realistic timeline.

Thanks for watching and have a great day. 👏